Reduce OneDrive Storage
Students, faculty and staff have a limited amount of storage space (a quota) in OneDrive. Follow this guide to learn different methods of reducing your storage consumption.
Items in your Recycle Bin count against your storage quota.
Version History counts against your storage quota.
SharePoint connections (the “Add Shortcut to OneDrive” tool) do not count against your OneDrive Quota.
Separate Data
Faculty and Staff (including student employees)
Faculty and staff should not store personal data in OneDrive. Keeping your work life and personal life separate can be essential for success; your cloud storage is no different. Personal (not related to employment) pictures, documents and pdfs, and spreadsheets should be stored in personal cloud storage accounts. Following this advice will help you reduce your usage of your work storage account.
Department files should be stored in SharePoint instead of OneDrive. SharePoint files do not count against your OneDrive quota and remain available to your original department when you change department or leave the university. Learn how to move files into SharePoint: Copy/Move Files Between OneDrive and SharePoint
Employees (including student employees) should remember that their OneDrive storage is covered by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Employees lose access to their university OneDrive when their employment ends.
Students
Students should not store personal data in OneDrive. The OneDrive storage provided to you by the university is reserved for academic materials. Personal (not related to coursework) pictures, documents, pdfs, and spreadsheets should be stored in personal cloud storage accounts. Following this advice will help you reduce your usage of your university storage account.
Students must remember that when they separate from the university, their OneDrive will be permanently deleted. When separating from the university, through graduation, failure to register, etc., you will be notified of your impending account deletion and be given instructions for exporting your data.This
Find your largest files and folders
Visit Check Storage Available in OneDrive
Version History
OneDrive keeps a version history of every file in your OneDrive. This allows you to go “back in time” and restore your file to a previous state. These previous states of the file count against your quota because they act as time capsules: they are a complete version of the file. Learn more: Version History for Files in OneDrive
Storage consumed by Version history is usually only noticeable on large files, 2GB in size or greater.
You may remove specific previous versions to free up space.
This option is only beneficial on large files, where each version is multiple gigabytes (GB).
Right-click on a file to view “Version History”
You may Copy (not “Move”) the file to create a discrete new file. The copy will not have version history. After a successful copy, delete the original file. Learn more about Copying: Copy/Move Files Between OneDrive and SharePoint
.PST files (Outlook export files) and similar files may have many versions created, which will quickly balloon into a huge item. Avoid keeping these files in your OneDrive if you have them open in the Outlook app.
If the .PST is stored in OneDrive and is open in your Outlook app, remove the .PST from Outlook when you are finished with its contents.
If appropriate, import the PST into your own mailbox so that you can then delete the .PST file.
Reduce the number of Versions captured: Alter Version History retention in OneDrive
Reach out to techsupport@uconn.edu if you have any questions
Data Hoarding
Deleting files can be hard. The term “data hoarders” is used lovingly among the community of people who hold onto all the data that they can. However, there are good reasons to rid your storage of old data*.
PII and HIPPA
There are times when we need to collect personal information, there’s no avoiding it. There is however a time to rid ourselves of that data and therefore rid ourselves of the responsibility of holding that data. It’s important to decide when it’s no longer appropriate to hold someone’s data, such as when they leave the university.
Outdated information
As time goes on, technology and practices change; your instructions and data my no longer be accurate.
Unneeded Information
Deleting old data can be a culture shift. It may feel strange removing files that you’re used to keeping. It comes back to the question of, “do I really need this?” There may be value in retaining old files, but it’s appropriate to draw a line and decide that some data is just unnecessary.
*ITS understands that certain files are required by law to be held for a certain amount of time and sometimes require approval for deletion. Please reach out to techsupport@uconn.edu if you have any questions.